With the population of bedridden patients estimated to be several million in the United States alone, care for the bed bound presents a number of significant problems in the health-care industry worldwide.
The daily care regimen for a bed-bound patient includes a plurality of routines, such as toileting, bathing, changing of the bed sheets, immobility-related disease prevention and treatment procedures, physical observation, and remedial procedures, to name a few. Some of these routines must be performed several times a day. In view of the regular nature of the aforementioned care regimen, it is saliently problematic that conventional methods of attending to the bedridden are mentally and physically stressful for the patient, physically-challenging for the caregiver, and are fiscally and temporally inefficient. For example, a procedure to change the bed sheets requires the attendant to move the patient to one side of the bed and then to the other side to enable removal of the old sheets and the installation of the fresh ones. These actions not only bring unnecessary discomfort to the patient, both in the physical and the psychological sense, but may also promote injury to the patient""s skin due to friction, which unavoidably occurs between the skin and the bed sheets. The procedure is also physically-strenuous for the care-provider, often causing back injuries and carpal-tunnel syndrome. Other routine procedures, such as toileting, bathing, immobility-related disease prevention and treatment procedures, physical observation, and remedial procedures administered to bed-bound patients present even greater difficulties for patients and their attendants alike. Because of compromises that inevitably result in attending to the bed bound in view of the foregoing concerns, other undesirable factors such as heat and moisture may never be sufficiently minimized in the health-care equation. Moreover, conventional methods of care giving are inefficient due to being time-consuming and labor-intensive, thus substantially increasing the cost of heath care for the bedridden patients.
A related concern associated with caring for bed-bound patients is the formation of decubitus ulcers, otherwise known as pressure or bed sores. Bed sores result from long periods of immobility during which the weight of the person""s skeleton presses against the underlying tissues, cutting off circulation thereto and causing those tissues to die. Additional factors that contribute to formation of bed sores include heat, moisture, and friction, all of which are associated with conventional methods of caring for bed-ridden patients, as discussed above. Heat increases the body""s need for nutrients due to accelerated metabolism. Moisture (urine, feces, and other body fluids) weakens the skin and may lead to infection. Frictional forces tear the skin, aggravating ulceration. Bedsores become infected easily, causing considerable discomfort for the patient and substantially complicating the patient""s health care, and may even be life-threatening. Medical studies have shown that complete relief of pressure for specific periods of time may often prevent ulceration of at-risk areas and permit restoration of circulation and cellular metabolism in affected areas of the body. However, conventional techniques of providing pressure relief generally cannot be administered without discomfort to the patient and considerable time and effort on the part of the caregiver.
Information regarding attempts to address the foregoing concerns can be found in U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,006,378; 5,906,017; 5,906,016; 5,345,629; 5,323,500; 5,279,010; 5,138,729; and 5,023,967, among others. However, the teachings of the references from the preceding list have not been successful in resolving all of the previously-mentioned problems.
Hence, a need exists for a bed or platform for servicing bedridden patients that: would allow the bed sheets to be changed quickly, substantially without moving or disturbing the patient, substantially without friction relative to the patient""s skin, and substantially without physical effort on the part of the caregiver; would permit toileting, bathing, immobility-related disease-prevention and treatment procedures, physical observation, and remedial procedures to be performed without moving or disturbing the patient and without physical effort on the part of the caregiver; would help prevent bed sores from forming and help treat already-existing bedsores; would provide the caregiver direct access to any peripheral area of the patient""s body; would be sufficiently comfortable so that patients can rest; would be simple to maintain and inexpensive to manufacture; and would significantly reduce the costs of health care for bedridden patients.
A service bed is disclosed that: allows the bed sheets to be changed quickly, substantially without moving or disturbing the patient, substantially without friction relative to the patient""s skin, and substantially without physical effort on the part of the caregiver; permits toileting, bathing, immobility-related disease-prevention and treatment procedures, physical observation, and remedial procedures to be performed without moving or disturbing the patient and without physical effort on the part of the caregiver; helps prevent bed sores from forming and helps treat already-existing bedsores; provides the caregiver direct access to any peripheral area of the patient""s body; is sufficiently comfortable so that patients can rest; is simple to maintain and inexpensive to manufacture; and significantly reduces the costs of health care for bedridden patients. In one embodiment of the invention, the service bed comprises a chassis, a guide mechanism movably supported by the chassis, and a mattress having an undulation formed by routing the mattress through the guide mechanism. The guide mechanism includes dispensing and collecting rollers for installing at least one first stratum between the mattress and the occupant of the service bed and for removing at least one second stratum installed between the mattress and the occupant.
These and other features, aspects, and advantages of the service bed in its various embodiments will become apparent after consideration of the ensuing description, the accompanying drawings, and the appended claims.